Purchase Order

Start

highest damage build
Notes this will be your build for the highest damage output and destroying tanks.
Can replace ninja tabi with asi

Warrior Tabi

Devourer's Gauntlet

Odysseus' Bow

The Executioner

Qin's Sais

Titan's Bane

lifesteal heavy build
Notes replace boots with titans or buy titans instead of odysseus bow and replace boots with ody bow.
buy devos first if you think you will be safe and not fighting a lot to get your stacks online.

Devourer's Gauntlet

Warrior Tabi

Asi

The Executioner

Qin's Sais

Odysseus' Bow

boxing build
Notes i am not the biggest fan of this build because your first items after boots are expensive. but as soon as you get ichival and espacially after asi you should not lose a trade against another hunter in lane.
can replace boots with titans bane

Warrior Tabi

Ichaival

Asi

The Executioner

Qin's Sais

Odysseus' Bow

Hou Yi's Skill Order

Ricochet

1X

13679

Mark of the Golden Crow

2A

48101112

Divebomb

3B

215161819

Sunbreaker

4Y

513141720

Items

As you see in the builds i gave i am not a big fan of crit because i think it limits you too much because you can not kill tanks well.
I prefer the first two builds because i am not the biggest ichaival fan. The reason for that is if you lane opponent avoids fighting you your build gets delayed in terms of getting teamfight items or pen just for ichaival which is not worth in my opinion if you do not fight in lane.
I think odysseus bow might be the second best hunter item after odysseus bow right now so i always get it.

Skills

For skills you level your 1 first because it is your waveclear. After that maxing the 2 increases your damage and boxing potential the most.
I would max the 2 before putting more points into your ult because you gain a damage boost not just when your ult is up and the 2 also increases the damage your ult does.(only exception is if you already teamfight a lot and feel like you lose out on a lot of damage your ult could do)

Pros / Cons

Pros:
-good fighting potential in lane
-good at killing tanks
-big teamfight ult that can zone and cut off fights well

Cons:
-bad clear earlygame makes fighting hard when you get outcleared
-no attack speed steriod forces you to build a lot of attack speed (not that bad currently because the meta favours a lot of high attack speed items)
-not the best lategame compared to hypercarries such as Freya or Xbal

Summary

Hou yi is an aggressive god in lane. You can take on almost any god in boxing fights and have a lot of kill potential.
He is really good at killing tanks because of his 2.
For playstyle i would play aggressive in the laning phase and in teamfights just hit whatever is in front of you. If you get shots on their backline perfect. If not you just kill their tanks and win the fight that way.
He is overall a mid tier hunter right now but you can make him work and if you get ahead he is really scary.
The buff to his ult gives him a lot of potential to reposition himself while using it to get a stun or even a double bounce off which should win you every 1v1 fight.

you could do that yes but it takes away from your capability to kill the frontline in the way that you have less attack speed so you get less qins procs and i think odysseus bow is too strong to not build it.
i dont think the build is bad because two crits on a backline target can win a fight but i think consistent and reliable damage output are better than the gamble that crit is.

it even gets build that way in spl on other hunters and also on hou yi the item is crazy powerfull even without a lot of power 2300 gold for 40attack speed and the passive also has a base damage value. it does a lot even in third spot.

it does a lot of damage in teamfights so if you are planning on fighting for goldfury or constantly invading buffs the item is great while still not crippling you too hard when it comes to boxing in lane because it has a really high amount of attack speed and is better for boxing the other adc then axecutioner which is a typical third item

I think that's a good portion of it...I think it's great you recognize that. O-Bow for teamfights is very functional. It's also solid when you haven't built up that much AS in the build prior to that.

But I think it's more than that. SPL has team coordination, and a general trust in your teammates. The question is...why do you see it so often in SPL, but not nearly as much in standard ranked?

Answer: Burst.

In SPL, they know the enemy is going to pull out of DPS when they recognize things aren't going their way. It's much, much easier to back out of DPS than burst damage. Pros are extremely good at connecting not only their basics, but their abilities as well. So it gets back to O-Bow...why are they getting it so early? To help deal with the minion waves, which in their case is more secondary, because their bigger concern is a teamfight. Save the abilities more, and use the O-Bow chain lightning to help clear the wave. Use the abilities for more burst potential on the enemy gods. And in the case of Hou, the additional stun the ability can provide.

But in the end, I'm not going to argue O-Bow 3rd. It's not my preference, and you won't see me build that way, but I'm not (anywhere near) a pro, and I see the purpose.

This gets, then, to your 2nd build. Why, on a god that has good long-distance poke, are you getting 2 lifesteal items within the first 3??? If getting Devo's 1st or 2nd, I don't see the excessive need for lifesteal unless we're talking late-game, partially just to survive more, and maybe to counteract some enemy anti-heal. Asi, when getting Devo's 1st, just should NOT be needed 3rd. I can't support that idea.

As for the 3rd build with no stacking items, that's okay. It's a bit more questionable to get Ichaival early with the cost nerf, but I'm one of those that feels the item is worth that extra cost. It's just extremely strong, and if you can avoid enemy abilities and just deal with basics, if you have Ich and the enemy doesn't, I feel you're very likely to win a 1v1. And just as a plus, in this build before replacing Tabi, your AS is 2.45...at the cusp of the cap, allowing you to get max function out of Qin's.

there are two main reasons for the double lifesteal being good in my opinion. you can tank the goldfury without losing health which allows you to start it and see how the enemy reacts and it also allows you to get pocked in teamfights and heal from 10% health back to 100% just by clearing one camp. this gives you to ability to participate in fights twice if you dont die instantly. same goes for boxing in lane if you lose a trade you heal back to full on a single wave that wont be the case with just devos and the turn potential when getting dove is insane with 74%lifesteal with the proc.

These are good reasons overall, but a bit on the situational side. Still don't prefer it, but that's just my opinion. Would prefer going into Exe, or still perhaps consider an early Ich when I've already got one lifesteal item.

Teamfight poke:
If you're allowed to heal up after getting poked that hard either the fight is already lost or the enemy team messed up. Late game a squishy god like a hunter is either at full hp or dead. Lifesteal is not really a teamfight stat. It's better after a fifht or in between so you can secure objectives without needing to be afraid of getting killed by that one god that didn't get killed.

Boxing:
Nice you can heal up after losing a trade, however depending on the cause you lost a trade will cause you to probably lose the next trade too.

Turn potential is pretty neat, however in most cases if you're getting dove the enemy messed up. In any good dive you die within the time span of a CC ability

Executioner helps physical teammates though, and I believe the protection debuff from it works on the gold fury. So why prioritise it over exe? Surely by the time you get exe (so third item), the enemy support will have at least 1 physical defense item?

with executioner you hit their support a bit harder but you lose out on attack speed and also the dmg that ody passive does in teamfights it is more than people think every proc hits 4 times for about 80-100dmg at that level spread on all of their team so you can also damage the backline while hitting the frontline.
for boxing in lane hunters have low base prots so you benefit more from the ody passive and the 15% extra attack speed in trade for the 30 power and the pen.

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